The Mousetrap

The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest running professional play in England at over seventy years with a small COVID break. Here is a chance to see a good production in our own back yard. The play is set in a mansion house that the relatively new owners decided to rent on room-by-room basis. At the start there are five guests, unknown to each other and the owners but they seem relatively normal. Then how can you tell. When we learn that house is snowed in and there has been a recent murder in the relative region, the focus on the various characters intensified. Oh, then one more guest comes on skis. Wow!

Director Sharon White has displayed her expertise as a director of the Christie plays, with this one of her best offerings.  What was particularly good was the set design, with many entrances, including the windows, through which there were many chances for a villain to appear. The cast of eight all looked the right age and disposition but that did not really help.

Helen Barrett and Matthew Hobbs as the owner were good as the hosts who tried to understand what was happening. Were they really? However, Brendan James was the life of the play as Christopher Wren - no not that Christopher Wren. He was the vocal life that the play needed. Impressive Phillipa Dwyer too was a consistent woman of mystery as Miss Casewell. Tyson Hargreaves was an impressive Det. Insp. Trotter, who arrived late chasing a solution to a murder which he claimed someone at the mansion had done. Chris Sibley, Matt McNeice and John Stibbard completed the cast list. John Stibbard's character was definitively strange. That mixture did not make it any easier for the audience to work out who did or had done what. The odd murder of one of the guests did not make it any easier.